The advice on this page is for government staff who are planning to request a form. If you have these pieces in place, it will enable us to design and publish your form with minimal feedback.
Determine which type of form is the best to meet user and business needs
The government produces PDF and web forms. Find out which is the best option to meet your requirements.
Make your sure your program or service has a completed Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA)
In order to publish a public-facing form where you collect personal information, you must have a completed PIA.
We recommend you contact your department ATIPP coordinator if you are unsure if the information you plan to collect is considered "personal information."
They can also help you write your data collection notice for your form.
Familiarize yourself with the forms standards and guidance
There are form design standards and user experience standards you must incorporate into your form. Have a look all the guidance in the Forms section of this site so you can plan your approach for applying them to your project.
Draft your form content with your department communications lead
There are a lot of writing for the web and style guide rules to follow as you work on your content. We've provided some guidance and advice in the Content standards section of this site, but we strongly recommend you work with your department communications lead. They are trained on these writing standards and will ensure the content in your form meets them.
Contact FLSD to let them know about the project
All public-facing forms must be translated. Loop in the French Language Services Directorate as soon as you have an idea about your timeline and page or word count.
UPDATE: we contact FLSD for this.
Make sure you have approval to request a form
Make sure you have approval from the service owner to request a form. The service owner is the person who is responsible for delivering the program or service. This person is usually a director.
Plan your budget
- Email [email protected] to talk about the costs for designing and publishing PDF forms.
- Email [email protected] to talk about the cost for designing and publishing a web form.
Privacy Impact Assessment
If you need to start or update your Privacy Impace assessment (PIA), you may need a budget for that work. You can email [email protected] to use their qualified source list (QSL) to hire a vendor or you can ask for the template to do the work in-house.
The PIA must be completed before you publish your form.
Create a project timeline
Much of the project works begins before you make your forms request. We recommend you create a timeline to account for the following.
- Any PIA work you might need to do before the form can be published.
- Develop the content and get it reviewed to meet the standards.
- Get the form translated.
- Time for the forms designer to design the form and send you a draft.
- Time for your team to review and approve the form for publishing.
If you are creating a web form, you'll be following the government's service delivery process. eServices can help you create a timeline so you've accounted for all of the required asseements to ensure your form meets the government's digital service standards.